


Finding Tallahassee

by AteneaB



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers: S03E15 Quiet Minds, Tallahassee - Freeform, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1972218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AteneaB/pseuds/AteneaB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"'Go find Tallahasse'</em>, he said. <em>'Even if it's without me'</em>. But he didn't understand. Without him, there could be no Tallahassee..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Tallahassee

**Author's Note:**

> The warning is for a canonical character death (s03e15: Quiet Minds)
> 
> English is not my first lenguage, so I apologize for any mistakes.

A day like that, thirteen years ago, she had met him. It wasn´t much of an anniversary but she had never forgotten the date, no matter how much she had wanted to. It had gotten stuck in the back of her head and it had refused to let go ever since. So there she was, kneeling in front of his grave.

_Neal Cassidy. Beloved son._

_"I was hoping that this was a trick. I was hoping you were dead"_  , she had said to him once,  _"Because it would be easier for me to put you behind me, than to face all the pain that we´ve been through all over again"_. Yes, she had said that... And she had been wrong. This wasn´t any easier, in fact, this was even harder than it had been losing him that first time. Harder than the betrayal, harder than been abandoned, harder than been left pregnant in jail, harder than wondering and thinking he had never loved her, harder than finding him again and thinking he had move on... It was harder, because there was no going back from this. There was no rage, no offense or fury in which to find a refugee, just loss and pain and a future without him.

 _"Beloved son"_ , said the headstone. He had been so much more than that. He had been a hero, a father, her first and greatest love. For some time, he had been her home, her everything. In some ways, he still was. In some ways, he would always be. But how to put all that in a headstone?

Emma touched the swan necklace that always hanged around her neck.  _"I saved this for you, to give to you again"_. That necklace had seen and survived it all. At the end, it had been all of Neal she had been left with. That, and Henry... _And the stolen car she had stolen from him once, a day like this one, thirteen years ago_ , she thought with a smile.

"Love?" she heard someone calling her from behind.  _Killian_ , she thought before turning to see him. And there he was, watching her with that sad but understanding face he always made when he knew she was thinking about Neal.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

 _No, I´m not. Sometimes I feel I´ll never be fine again._ "Yes", she answered, knowing he wouldn´t believe her. In the end, he didn´t need a superpower to catch a lie so evident. But he didn´t say anything and, for a moment, she thought that would be it, that he would leave her be, give her space and come back later, like he always did. But he didn´t.

"When I lost Milah" he began "I thought I would never love again, that my heart had died with her. I felt like that for a very long time, until I met you and I couldn´t help loving you. I can´t help loving you. But there it was, Bealfire. Milah´s son and the father of yours and you still loved him and he still loved you. There was nothing to do, I knew it in Neverland. 'I can´t compete with that' I told myself, so I decided to back off"

Emma listened to him with the pendant still between her fingers and her face looking at the headstone because, for some reason, she couldn´t bear to look at him right then.

"When Baelfire died, I mourned for him because I loved him too. He was, after all, a part of Milah and for a time I had acted like his father, so how couldn´t I? For some time I even felt guilty for loving so much the woman he had loved but then, he was dead and you were here and I just couldn´t stop loving you"

Emma closed her eyes and felt the tears running in her cheeks. He sounded so sad, so resigned, so hurt. She had never meant to hurt him.

"When you gave me a chance I told myself to be grateful. The woman of my dreams had chosen me, after everything I had done. There, in front of me, was my second chance and I took it. 'She´s not indifferent to me´I told myself. 'With time, she´ll learn to love me as much as I love her'"

"And I do" she said, because she couldn´t let him think otherwise.

"I know", Killian reassured her, and a smile could be heard in his voice. "I know... But you wouldn´t have looked at me twice, not seriously, if Baelfire hadn´t died"

For some time there was only silence. Just the wind and her tears falling. But then, she felt Killian´s arms around her, enveloping her and she felt herself break a little. She felt his hand traveling trough her arm until it reached her hand still wrapped around the necklace. Gently, he forced her hand to let it go to grab it himself and feel it in his fingers.

"A person can love more than once, you know? And it doesn´t make any of them less true than the other. But there is one love that is like no other, that´s why it´s called  _one true love_. Because it´s unique, irrepeatable and irrepleaceable. I don´t know if Milah was mine, but I do know Baelfire was yours as much as you were his"

At that, Emma tried to shake him off and turn away but Killian didn´t let her, he just hold onto her harder.

"And I think I always knew... Fate brought you together. Fate kept you apart. And, in the end, fate took him away from you... Fate was cruel with you two, if you ask me"

He hold her while she shaked and cried and Emma knew right then, in that moment, that wathever Killian was trying to prove, he wasn´t doing it to hurt her. How could he, if his love for her could be felt so clearly through his embrace?

"I just want you to know that I know. I know you´ll never stop loving him. I know you´ll never love me like you loved him. I know that I´ll never replace him in your heart and I´m not trying to because I know there´s no competing with a ghost. So if you need to come here and cry because you miss him, you don´t have to hide it from me. You don´t have to tell me you are okay when you are not. And you definitely don´t have to pretend you don´t love him, okay love? I´m not going anywhere and you don´t have to spare my feelings, because I know"

Emma felt him leave a gentle kiss in her neck before taking her hand and wrapping it around the necklace again.

"Be with him today. I´ll see you tomorrow", he said before letting her go.

She heard his footsteps going away and the words just left her mouth before she could even think about them.

"He told me to find Tallahasse", she said.

The footsteps stopped instantly and Emma continued because she had already started and she just had to tell someone and _he knew_ so, why hide it?

"' _Go, find Tallahassee'_  , he said, _'Even_ _if it´s without me'_. But he didn't understand. Without him, there could be no Tallahassee, because Tallahassee was  _our place_ , where _we_ were going to have  _our home_ and build  _our family_. Even if I had all of that with someone else it wouldn´t be Tallahasse. It would be something else, but not that, because  _that_ was  _ours_ "

Finally, Emma cleaned her cheeks, no matter that the tears were still falling because she didn´t want to cry anymore, she was tired of crying, and she turned around to look at Killian´s blue eyes.

"I promised that I would be happy. I promised to him that Henry would be happy, and he promised to watch over us, always. That promise, I can keep. I´m trying to"

Killian was watching her attentively, without making any faces, just listening, without trying to interrupt her and Emma was grateful. She didn´t know if she would have been able to go on otherwise.

"I love you" she said simply, and right then was the only moment she could see a reaction in Killian. The way he had catched his breath, as if in surprise, told her that no matter how much Killian had said he knew, hearing it was a reassurance he had needed. "But you are right, Neal was my _one true love,_  and I never knew it until I lost him. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him and never stopped. I´ll never be able to stop. And it was not fair. It wasn´t fair that I couldn´t have  _my_ happy ending with him. That  _we_ couldn´t have Tallahasse together, like we wanted. Fate was, indeed, cruel with us because, why make us each other´s if we were never going to get to be together?"

Emma reached for the necklace again and glanced briefly at the headstone before continuing.

_Neal Cassidy. Beloved son._

"I thought it would be easier to move on if he died. I had lost him before. I had lived most of my life without him and I could do it again. But it´s not the same. It´s not the same as when I thought he didn´t love me and he had left me because now I know he did. Because now I´ve seen with my own eyes that fairytales and happy endings do exist. Because now he didn´t just left, he died and he is not coming back and I can´t even be mad at him for it because he died protecting us, protecting _me_ , protecting  _our son_ , and... and..."

The tears had become incontrolable by then but when Killian took a step forward as if trying to reach for her Emma extended her hand to signal him to stop.

"I love you", she repeated, because it was important that he didn´t doubt that, "But I can´t go and find Tallahassee like he wanted. Not with you and not with anybody else. I just can´t..."

At that, Killian couldn´t help but wince a little. She didn´t mean to hurt him, but he had asked for honesty, it had been him the one who told her not to spare his feelings, not to hide, and she just needed to say it.

In the end, he had said he had known, but it might have been a bit different to hear it said so bluntly.

"You said that you thought your heart had died with Milah. I _know_ that, in some way, mine died with Neal"

Killian looked at her and Emma saw a single tear fall from his left eye while he pressed his lips and clenched his jaw.

"I know" he repeated, like those two words meant more that just that, and maybe they did, because she understood with them all he wasn´t saying:  _I´m hurt, but I can´t blame you. I always knew what I was getting into. I can´t make you feel differently. It´s not okay, but it´s fine, we´ll find a way to get through it. I´m not leaving you. I love you._ And she knew too, so she just assented with her head and gave him a small smile before turning and kneeling in front of the grave again. That time, the footsteps didn´t stop.

Without knowing, she had stopped crying. That was good. She was sure Neal wouldn´t have liked to see her crying in front of his grave. (Not like he could complain or anything but still) The thought, somehow, made her laugh briefly.

 _"We never found Tallahassee"_ , he had said.  _"I care about you Emma. I just want you to be happy, even if it´s not with me"_.

" _We_ were happy... once..." she said to the headstone, just like she had told him back then "I was happy with you. You made me happy. We could have been again, together, given the time. We could have found Tallahassee".  _But we never did._

Killian had been right: fate had been cruel with them indeed. But, maybe, fate was always kind of a bitch with everyone. It had been with Rumpelstinskin, who had spent centuries and waited for so long to find his son, just to loose him forever in the blink of an eye. It had been with Henry, who had learned his father was, in fact, alive just to forget about him and have him dying before he could even remember him, thinking he had never loved them... So, yeah, fate hadn´t been cruel just with her, but above all of that, it had been specially cruel with Neal. He had suffered so much, lost so much. He had deserved so much better.

"I love you", she said to the headstone, because she had never told him enough when he was alive, "I love you _so much..._  I´ll always will..."

A day like that, but thirteen years ago, she had stolen his stolen car and met him. She had fallen in love with him forever and life would never be the same again.

 _"Go find Tallahassee"_ , he had told her, but that wasn´t possible. Not anymore, not without him.

"Maybe in another life, fate will be kinder and we can go find Tallahassee", Emma wishpered before getting up and turning away.

As she was leaving, as if an afterthought, she touched the necklace,  _their necklace_ , one last time and blew a kiss to him with her hand.

They said true love´s kiss was the most powerfull magic of all, able to brake any curse, so, maybe, just maybe, it could make that wish come true.

_Wait for me. I´ll wait for you. And then, we can go and find Tallahassee together, okay?_

**Author's Note:**

> I must say that I started watching "Once Upon a Time" this year, so Neal was already dead by then and I had already spoiled myself the news, that's why I thought I would be ready for it when it happened, but I wasn´t.
> 
> The show, until mid-season 3 was amazing and wonderfully written but after the second curse, I don´t know what happened. It´s like the writers forgot every foundation they had been building on until then. Why save Neal after he "died" at the end of Season 2 just to practically ignore him in Season 3 and kill him off a few episodes later? Why build his relationship with Emma, make them love each other even after 11 years like there hadn´t passed a day, make parallelisms with the Snow/Charming pairing to just kill all hope by... well, kiling him. They made all Season 2 about the two of them being on the edge of going back together, they tell each other their "I love yous" and they left it all in nothing. They should have made them try and fail if they wanted Emma to move on, it would have been more realistic than this, but they couldn´t, because when you construct a love so inconditional that survives time, pain and betrayal, in this show that it´s about fairytales and true love, how do you kill it? How do you make it believable for Emma to stop loving Neal, if she still loved him even when she thought he had set her up and sent her to jail? How, when you already made their characters say they´ll always love each other? When you made them fall in love at first sight? When you made it impossible for them to forget each other?
> 
> I don´t think Neal´s death has been a wise decision and I think they are going to regret it very soon. Shipping aside, Neal was a very good character with a strong backstory totally misused and wasted. And no matter how much I love Hook (and believe me, I do) his pairing with Emma feels forced and rushed. So much, that the episodes after the Wicked Witch´s death didn´t appeal to me at all and I didn´t watch them. And I´m the kind of person that can resist when their ship doesn´t become canon, as long as it is well written (I hated Ginny Weasly and was a fervent H/Hr fan, but Rowling sold R/Hr and H/G so well that I had to admit it made better sense and was satisfied with how things ended, even if I didn´t like the pairings)
> 
> I have to say it´s a shame. The show contradictes itslef by killing Neal off. What about second chances, happy endings, "there is always hope" and "love conquers all"? Why must EVERY OTHER CHARACTER find a salvation when at the edge of death or when they are already dead (Blue Fairy, August, Prince Phillip, Rumplestinskin, Prince Charming, even Robin Hood´s wife!) but Neal? It would have been real in any other show but this one.
> 
> Season 4 only interests me so far as the Charming´s lifes, and Enchanted Forest´s and Neal´s flashbacks. With this move, the show has lost its quality.
> 
> I´m sad and disapointed, because I expected better. I expected a good death, not a rushed and badly justified one. I expected a last moment for Neal to be with his son. I expected at least a final kiss with Emma if he was going to die to never come back... It seemed unfair and cruel and it left me really sad and confused. It didn´t make sense.
> 
> So, that´s my opinion and I had to rant somewhere about it. Sorry about that...


End file.
